Weekes held up his old trophy and smiled into the mirror, then flexed some more. I slowly took a step backward. One of the floorboards creaked. Coach Weekes whipped around. He looked mortified.
“Gibbs!” he said. “What are you doing here? My office is my personal— School let out twenty minutes— Er, why are you— Gibbs!”
“Sorry,” I said. “I, uh, thought this was the bathroom?”
“Well, it’s not! And next time you should knock, because I’m doing important coach stuff in here! Good manners are part of fitness, too, you know!”
“Right. Sorry,” I said again. I turned to go. But as I did, something caught my eye.
In a hole at the base of the wall, beside Coach Weekes’s mirror, I saw a tiny pair of black eyes looking back at me.
“What are you gawking at, Gibbs?” asked Coach Weekes.
“Your trophy,” I lied, pointing to the one in his hand.
Coach Weekes gazed at it lovingly. The trophy had a sculpture on top: an angry-looking child with the build of a superhero. Weekes smiled. “Little Mister Muscles. Won it when I was your age, for general physical excellence. Knuckle-ups! The Sixty-Foot Sandbag Drag! Now that was a real competition!”
“Wow, knuckle-ups? That sounds, uh, really awesome,” I lied, stalling as I inched toward the hole in the wall. “I wish we had, you know, something like that today.”
Coach Weekes stroked his mustache. “You know, Gibbs, that’s not a half-bad idea.”
“You really think so, Coach?” I said. I was barely a foot from the hole now. I crouched down and reached out my hand—
“Sam?”
I turned. It was my mom.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she said, frowning. “Why weren’t you in the library?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I, uh, thought this was the bathroom.”
Coach Weekes shot my mom a concerned look. She sighed.
“Okay, well, it’s time to ah . . .” My mom froze. “It’s time to, ah . . . ah, ACHOOOOO!” And she sneezed, which is the loudest sound my mom ever makes. I can’t say for sure, but it might be the loudest sound known to science. Coach Weekes and I both jumped a foot into the air.
“Sorry,” said my mom, wiping her nose. “I must be allergic to something.”
“Muscles?” said Coach Weekes hopefully.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
As far as I know, my mom is allergic to one thing: furry animals. It’s the reason we have a hairless cat instead of, oh, I don’t know, a hamster.
Speaking of no hamsters: when I turned to look at the hole again, Hamstersaurus Rex wasn’t there.
CHAPTER 4
THE NEXT MORNING, before school, Beefer caught me alone in the hallway. He’s usually twenty minutes late to homeroom. Early Beefer wasn’t a good sign. I could see a lump the size of a golf ball on the top of his head. The guy was angry. Granted, Beefer Vanderkoff is always angry. But today, he was extra, super mega-angry. At me.
“Fine morning we’re having, isn’t it, Sam?” he said, glancing around for adults. Of course, whenever you needed them, there weren’t any.
“Sam? Oh no. You have made a large confusion,” I said, trying my best to do an accent. “I am his identical cousin, Jarmo. From Finland!”
“That’s not going to work a second time,” said Beefer.
He grabbed me by the arm and yanked me, once more, into the second-floor boys’ bathroom. Someone had righted the trash can Beefer punched, but it still bore the dent from his clear belt karate demonstration. I worried that my face would soon have a similar dent.
“First off,” said Beefer, holding me by the collar, “you tell anybody what happened, that I got KO’d by a gerbil, you’re dead.”
“I didn’t see any gerbil,” I said. Technically true.
“Anybody asks, I was minding my own business, vandalizing the school, when those dumb planets randomly fell on my head. Got it?”
“Sure. Just an innocent act of vandalism,” I said. “Could’ve happened to anyone.”
“Second,” said Beefer, “when I find Martha Junior, he’s going to pay.”
“Hey, come on, Beefer,” I said. “You don’t need to worry about Hamstersaurus Rex. He’s just an animal. He didn’t—”
“I’ve seen the little posters you drew. I know you love that rodent. But I live by a very simple code, Sam. That code is: nobody drops a homemade solar system on Beefer Vanderkoff and gets away with it. Nobody.”
“I admire how specific your code is,” I said. “But there’s really no need to—”
“Enough gum-flapping,” he said, gripping my collar tighter. “I want to tell you about your special surprise.”
“A Caribbean vacation?”
“Nope. But it does involve water,” said Beefer with a yellow smile. He kicked open the door to one of the bathroom stalls. “You’re familiar with the regular old swirlie, of course.”
I sighed. “Sure. The thing where you flush the toilet and stick my head in it.” A swirlie is pretty awful, but probably not as bad as getting my face punched in. When you’re me, unfortunately, you have to rank these things.
“See, that’s just the problem,” said Beefer, putting his arm around me. “You’re used to swirlies. And that means we need something new. Last night—as I was lying in bed and rubbing this giant, painful bump on my head—I started thinking: How can I take the swirlie to the next level? How can I leave my own mark on a classic?”
“You’re considering your bullying legacy,” I said. “Great.”
“That’s when I came up with what I call the ‘Kiefer Beefer Vanderkoff Ultra-Swirlie,’ or the ‘KiBeVaUl-Swi’ for short.”
“KiBeVaUl-Swi,” I said. “Really rolls off the tongue.”
“The KiBeVaUl-Swi is just like a regular swirlie,” said Beefer, “except for one important innovation.”
Beefer reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-four-ounce bag of Uncle Puckett’s Powdered Pancake Mix (A SmilesCorp Product™). He tore the bag open, flushed the toilet, then dumped the powder in. It formed a swirling beige sludge in the bowl.
I frowned. “Is it too late for you to just punch me?”
“We’ll get to that,” said Beefer. “But first, your KiBeVaUl-Swi!”
And with that, he flipped me upside down.
“Please, Beefer, I have a very sensitive scalp!”
Beefer was unmoved. He dunked my head into the swirling goop. When he pulled me out, I was covered down to my shoulders in sticky, toilet-made pancake batter.
“Well?” said Beefer. He was waiting for his first customer review.
“It’s awful,” I said, wiping the stuff out of my eyes.
“Fantastic,” said Beefer. And with that, he slugged me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me.
“It’s only a matter of time before I find Martha Junior,” he said as he turned to leave. “I’m going to take him home and feed him to my pet boa constrictor. He’s a dead gerbil walking.”
I thought of seven or eight snappy comebacks but neglected to share them. I sure didn’t want another KiBeVaUl-Swi.
And so I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to clean off pancake batter in the sink. It doesn’t come out as easily as you think. In fact, while I was washing my face, my swirlied hair hardened into a weird, crusty spike. No matter how much I tried to flatten it, the shape kept reforming. The bell rang, and I had to go to class looking like the world’s saddest unicorn.
“Very avant-garde hairstyle, Sam,” said Mr. Copeland.
“Thanks,” I said, taking my seat.
“Not a compliment,” said Mr. Copeland. He waited a moment until everyone was settled. “All right, kids, some of you have noticed that our classroom’s model of the solar system is missing. That’s because of an incident that happened after school.” He squinted at Beefer, who pretended not to pay attention by leafing through the October issue of Pustule, the horror-movie special-effects magazine.
“Just to res
tate the obvious, none of you should be in this classroom unattended,” said Mr. Copeland as he confiscated Beefer’s magazine. “Got it?”
“Yes, Mr. Copeland,” we all said in unison.
Tina Gomez raised her hand.
“What is it, Tina?” said Mr. Copeland.
“I don’t know, Mr. Copeland. First we lose our class hamster, now our solar system model,” she said, shaking her head dramatically. “What tragedy is next?”
“Tina, we had a ‘class hamster’ for less than ten minutes,” said Mr. Copeland.
“We should really get some snails to replace him,” said Wilbur Weber.
“More snails is your solution to every problem, Wilbur.”
“Mr. Copeland, I have a theory,” said Martha Cherie, smiling in a way that she must have thought was sweetly.
“Great. Here we go,” said Mr. Copeland with a sigh.
“It may sound fanciful, but perhaps the two events are connected in some way,” she said. “I mean, Hamstersaurus Rex’s mysterious disappearance and the subsequent destruction of the solar system model, that is.”
Beefer was now glaring at me with raw hatred in his eyes. I could see the lump on his head throbbing. I shrugged frantically to indicate that I hadn’t told anyone he’d been KO’d by a gerbil.
“Sorry. No mystery here, Martha,” said Mr. Copeland. “Kiefer was messing with the solar system when it fell on his head. He enjoys spending time in this classroom so much, Principal Truitt has given him after-school detention every Monday for the foreseeable future.”
Beefer stretched and yawned to indicate boredom. Mr. Copeland gritted his teeth.
So Beefer and I were the only ones who knew the real truth. Despite his warnings, I had to tell somebody. I still had a hamster to find, and I figured two heads were better than one. So at lunch, I quietly recounted the solar system incident to the only person I could trust: Dylan D’Amato.
“Wow. Beefer Vanderkoff defeated by Hamstersaurus Rex,” said Dylan after listening to the whole story. “Sam, does it bother you that you’re not as tough as a hamster?”
“A little,” I said.
Dylan and I had been best friends ever since the first week of preschool—when I got an empty sand pail stuck on my head and she was the only kid strong enough to yank it off. We were plenty different. She made fun of me a lot, but when anybody else did she got furious. I always nodded politely when she went on and on about disc golf. I never laughed when she tried to draw stuff (even though every one of her pictures invariably ended up looking like a sweet potato with googly eyes).
“You should just stand up to Beefer,” said Dylan.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And you’ll cover the cost of my facial reconstruction surgery?”
“Nah, it’s not like that,” said Dylan. “Remember in second grade when you were scared to take baths because you thought a lobster was going to come up the drain?”
I sighed. “Yes, I remember.”
“That’s what Beefer is.”
“An imaginary drain lobster?”
“I mean, if you’re not afraid of him then he doesn’t have any power over you.”
“What? Yes, he does. The power to punch me and stick me in pancake toilets and probably some other worse stuff that I haven’t even thought of yet!”
“I know, but if you’re not afraid of getting punched—”
“But I am afraid of it,” I said. “It hurts. A lot.”
“Okay, fine. Look, if you want me to, I can kick his butt on your behalf. I’ve got some free time this afternoon.” She demonstrated a little shadowboxing.
“You can’t fight my battles for me, Dylan. I’m going to handle this one the good old-fashioned Sam Gibbs way: with plenty of cowardice and a dash of hiding,” I said. “Anyway, forget about Beefer. I’m just glad Hamstersaurus Rex is okay.”
“You sure love that weird hamster, huh?”
“As much as you love disc golf.”
“Wow,” said Dylan, nodding with newfound respect. “That’s a lot.”
I told her about seeing Hamstersaurus Rex flee into the gymnasium.
“Living in Coach Weekes’s office, huh? I sure hope the little dude likes the smell of weight gainers and feet,” said Dylan. “We should tell Mr. Copeland—”
“What? No way!” I said. “Beefer’s out for revenge. If Hamstersaurus Rex goes back into the cage in our classroom, he’ll be a sitting duck. Beefer will get him for sure! In fact, now I have to find Hamstersaurus Rex before Beefer does.”
“Maybe during gym class, you can figure out a way to sneak into Weekes’s office and rescue him,” she suggested.
“Good thinking,” I said. “Just promise me you won’t tell anybody about any of this, okay?”
Dylan laughed. “Sam, when have I ever spilled a secret?”
I cocked my head. “What about the time you let it slip that my mom calls me Bunnybutt?”
“Sorry about that,” she said. “I mean, it’s not the worst nickname.”
I frowned. “Just keep this quiet, all right.”
“Keep what quiet?” asked Martha Cherie. She’d appeared out of nowhere, like some sort of honor-student ghost.
“Nothing!” I said. “I mean, uh, I was just telling Dylan to keep it quiet, when she plays her, uh, trombone. We play together. In a band. It’s Dylan on trombone and me on, uh . . .”
“Washboard,” said Dylan.
“Right,” I said. “A classic trombone and washboard duo. If she plays too loud, it drowns me out.” I smiled and pantomimed a wicked air washboard solo.
“Wow, Sam,” said Martha, “I knew you were really creative, ever since you drew that beautiful portrait of me last year.”
“You mean the caricature where Sam made your nose look like an overripe beet?” said Dylan in disbelief.
“Uh-huh. I love beets,” said Martha. “So what’s the name of your band?”
“The Dylan D’Amato Experience,” said Dylan, crossing her arms and squinting at her. “Very hip. You probably wouldn’t get it.”
“Is that why you have a flamboyant new rock ’n’ roll hairstyle?” said Martha. She was looking at my crusty pancake hair-horn.
“Uh-huh,” I said, fluffing it up a little. “Pretty edgy, huh?”
“You look like a narwhal,” said Martha. “It’s my favorite northern-latitudes sea mammal.”
I gave her a thumbs-up. Dylan rolled her eyes four, maybe five, times.
“Anyway, I wanted to share some information with you, Sam, since you seem to be concerned about the fate of our beloved class pet.” Martha held up one of my Hamstersaurus Rex posters. “Perhaps I shouldn’t even be telling you this, as it’s part of an ongoing Hamster Monitor investigation—”
“Hamster Monitor isn’t a real thing,” said Dylan. “You know that, right?”
Martha held up her ID lanyard as proof. “Like I said earlier, I think the solar system falling and Hamstersaurus Rex disappearing are related.”
“What?” I said with a forced, high-pitched laugh. “No way.” If Martha connected the dots, Beefer would assume I told her. Then he would pound me.
“I was able to recover the piece of string from the ceiling,” said Martha. She held it up. “I examined the frayed end under a microscope in the science lab. It appears to have been gnawed. What if Hamstersaurus Rex did that?”
“Come on!” I said, panicking. “You’re joking. Ha-ha. You’re so funny, Martha. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
She smiled. “No. When people compliment me, it’s usually on my above-average intelligence, my punctuality, or my commitment to flossing.”
“Oh, please,” muttered Dylan.
“Well, personally, I think Hamstersaurus Rex is gone for good,” I said. “Probably just as well. I like to think of him out there in the wilderness somewhere. Maybe he joined a pack of wild hamsters. Running free across the tundra—”
“No,” said Martha. “I have reason to believe that Hamstersaurus Rex is still living so
mewhere within the school. In fact, I believe I know his approximate location.”
“Where?” I said.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose that information,” said Martha.
“Come on. You have no idea where he is,” said Dylan.
“Do too,” said Martha. “He’s in the boiler room.”
“Wrong,” said Dylan.
What was Dylan doing? I tried to catch her eye but she ignored me.
“That’s pretty unlikely,” said Martha, “because I’ve never been wrong before.”
Dylan snapped. “Oh, come on! The boiler room? The boiler room! That’s all the way on the other side of the school from the gym!”
“So . . . you think Hamstersaurus Rex is in the gym?” said Martha. She already had her notebook out and she was scribbling something. I turned to stare at Dylan. She had both hands capped over her mouth.
“I mean, uh, who knows?” said Dylan quietly. “He could be in the . . . library.”
“I have all I need for now,” said Martha, smiling as she turned away. “Thanks, Dylan.”
CHAPTER 5
RAIN PELTED THE gymnasium windows.
“Look, Sam, I’m really sorry,” said Dylan. “I definitely didn’t mean to give up Hamstersaurus Rex’s location.”
“This is worse than Bunnybutt,” I said, shaking my head.
“I know.”
“This is even worse than that time in first grade”—I dropped my voice low—“when you told everyone I had an accident.”
“What?” cried Dylan. “That wasn’t me! I didn’t tell anyone you pooped your pants!”
“Shh!” I said, wincing. “Look, it’s all in the past now. Anyway, maybe Martha wasn’t listening when you told her exactly where to find Hamstersaurus Rex.”
The two of us were in phys ed class, taught by Coach Weekes. I hoped that I might find a moment to sneak away and look for Hamstersaurus Rex in his office. Preferably before anyone else got there first.
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